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Art Lee

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The Minnesota Vikings football team dominated the sports pages this past pall and early winter, starring as top division winners right up to Super Bowl time — and then, “oops” came their untimely loss in the NFC Championship game that would have landed them in the Super Bowl, played right here in Minnesota.

Retirement-time for school teachers includes the required chore of cleaning out your desk and the contents of your filing cabinet. It's the teacher's job who follows you to fill up both of them again, and for that new person to believe foolishly that retirement will never happen to him/her for at least a 100 years. Retirees like to believe that they are irreplaceable. They quickly learn the nonsense of that notion. They also learn that over many years they have acquired so much stuff of importance that that too is irreplaceable. Wrong.

It’s easy for bored and grumpy “senior” seniors to loll around the house, contemplating their aged navels and wishing they were young again, like 70. Ahhhh, the good ol’ days! Then along comes a sudden occurrence (actually there were two of ‘em) Minnesota Nice happenings that make one suddenly rethink their locale very positively. Yes, most folks ’round here are purdy darn nice and helpful. The help received may seem like just a little thing that doesn't count for much, but then it’s the little things in life that count the most.

For today's millennials, the event is ancient history; however, for seniors, the event seems like only yesterday. The event in question is World War II (1941-1945), a war so important that most American historians label it the most significant event for our nation in the past 100 years, if not all of U.S. history.

Each part of the country contains critters the locals find annoying -- or worse -- poisonous snakes. In Minnesota there's plenty of grass and/or garter snakes that easily annoy some folks and scare the bejeebers out of others. They may rarely "bite" people but the person bitten will not die from it. Oh, and then there's rattlesnakes. -- but not in Beltrami County.

TUSCON, Ariz. -- There are advantages to being a stranger coming into a community, notably seeing things differently than observed by those folks who have lived there a long time. For those latter newcomers, some things that are viewed as so different and special for them to notice are to the locals just ho-hum non-news, viewing nothing at all so special about them.